A Very Promising Italian Website

How about a website which monitors all the promises made by a nation’s erstwhile leaders? Does it sound like a good idea?

Well, Italy has just such a site and it’s called Promesse Pubbliche which would be Public Promises in English.

The site notes promises made by Italy’s politicians, public figures and celebrities. It then monitors the promises to see whether or not they are kept. On the basis of how may promises have been maintained, or not, the promising people are assigned a reliability score.

Here are Promesse Pubbliche’s reliability scores of some of Italy’s bigwig politicians:

Promesse Pubbliche does not limit itself to national politicians, it also keeps an eye on local level politicians such as the mayor of Milan, Giuliano Pisapia whose current reliability score is 50%, incidentally.

Details of Promises Made

Roberto Formigoni is the just about ex-president of the Italian region of Lombardy. After various scandals, Formigoni’s controversial reign was brought to an abrupt end after it was discovered that the mafia had infiltrated his regional government.

It is probable that Roberto Formigoni will end up with a comfortable seat, sponsored by Silvio Berlusconi, in Italy’s senate after Italy’s February elections.

How Reliable are the Reliability Scores?

Depending on how seriously you take them, the reliability rating does depend on how many promises make it onto Promesse Pubbliche and are then monitored. Promesse Pubbliche relies in part on the assistance of Italians to help with the identification of promises and then monitoring them to see whether they are kept, or not.

At present in Italy it’s election time, so those promises are in full flow. It would probably more accurate to say that Italy is overflowing with promises! Promesse Pubbliche is keeping an eye on a good few of them and this Italy watcher will be keeping an eye Promesse Pubbliche to see how many promises are maintained.

Promesse Pubbliche monitors promises made by Italy’s politicians and others

Promesse Pubbliche is run byPaolo Trapani who is a member is member of Italy’s journalists’ order. There are other journalists on the editorial team.

Contributions from member of the public are welcome.

Every Country Should Have One!

Promesse Pubbliche is a very interesting initiative and could be used by baffled voters in Italy trying to work out who they should vote for. As a general rule, those politicians who have kept their promises may be more worthy of votes than those who are forever promising and then not delivering.

It is easy to make promises, but making promises you the maintain indicates that whoever made the promise in the first place was not merely using a promise to attract votes, instead, the promise that were kept were probably based on a little practical analysis.

Promesse Pubbliche is quite a novel way of monitoring the performance of Italy’s vast number of politicians, as well as keeping an eye on other holders of public office too.

I have not checked, but I suspect other nations may have similar websites, and if they do not, then perhaps they should have. Such a site, when run well would be a benefit to democracy, as well as keeping citizens informed of the progress of their elected leaders.